Special waste incinerator plants for incinerating liquid and/or solid toxic substances have been known from, e.g., the German journal Chemie-Ingenieur-Technik, Vol. 59 (1987), No. 8, pp. 622-628.
The projectiles and other ammunition left over from the two world wars, which are filled with chemical warfare agents, represent a special type of special waste.
These chemical warfare agents may be solid and/or liquid toxic substances of a great variety of chemical compositions, or they may also be gaseous.
The chemical warfare agents continue to be in non-disarmed projectiles, i.e., the percussion, proximity or time fuses must be disarmed before any disposal.
The projectiles filled with chemical warfare agents may be stored in any type of container, or they may be disposed of as a pile in filled-up bodies of water, mines, or even at sea.
In the case of intensified corrosion, caused by moisture in the ground or seawater, there is a risk that the containers and the projectiles are or become leaky. As a result, the chemical and toxic substances come into direct contact with their immediate environment, i.e., the ground surrounding them, groundwater or seawater. These circumstances lead to the contamination of large areas.
The destruction of the large amounts of warfare agents still present has not been intensely pursued so far, because the selected storage was thought to be sufficiently safe for decades, and, e.g., the disposal of the warfare agents at sea was thought to solve the problem.
However, investigations conducted at such storage sites revealed that the containers in which the projectiles are stored have partially decayed, and further storage is no longer acceptable for reasons of environmental protection, so that the disposal of the chemical warfare agents is absolutely necessary.